KOSOVO: THE ROAD AHEAD

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4 RECOMMENDATIONS 1) The UN should move quickly to establish all of the institutions of self-government authorized by the Kosovo Constitutional Framework. Once the new Kosovo government is up and running, UNMIK chief Steiner should publicly announce that as the Kosovars show themselves capable of governing under these existing arrangements he will modify the Constitutional Framework to expand the areas of self-governance allowed to the people of Kosovo, consistent with the provisions of UNSC 1244. 2) Before the end of 2002, as the institutions of self-government take hold, Steiner should begin a process of consultations among the people and political parties of Kosovo intended to establish a road map for resolving the issue of Kosovo's final status. 3) The UN and other civilian agencies in Kosovo should begin the process of handing over administrative responsibility for all aspects of Kosovo's internal affairs to the local and province-wide institutions called for in existing documents and chosen in the elections of 2000 and 2001. 4) The UN should promptly privatize all medium- and large-scale formerly socially owned enterprises in Kosovo. 5) The UN should announce a date certain, perhaps the middle of 2003, at which time all policing responsibility in Kosovo will be handed over to the KPS, with a reduced number of UN police remaining in a monitoring and advisory role. The international community should provide sufficient training and equipment to allow the KPS to police Kosovo in a modern and democratic fashion. 6) Taking advantage of the presence of Serb deputies in the Kosovo Assembly, the UN should work with the new Kosovo government to establish the legal and institutional framework to allow Serbs full local autonomy within Kosovo, including, as necessary, the establishment of new municipalities. 7) The international community should provide the KPC with sufficient resources and equipment to carry out its task of civil defense. The international mission should insist that by the end of 2002 all KPC reservists be demobilized and should provide priority treatment to these demobilized KPC personnel in finding jobs, including appropriate jobs with elements of the international mission in Kosovo. 8) To foster genuine reconciliation between Kosovo Albanians and Serbs, UNMIK should help establish a mechanism which might be similar to the South African truth and reconciliation commission and which could—under international guidance—begin an honest and searching evaluation of past abuses by both communities.
5 ASSESSMENT Government Crisis The three-month stalemate over forming Kosovo's first democratically elected government—after internationally run elections in November 2001—finally ended on February 27 in a compromise brokered by newly arrived UN chief Michael Steiner. Ibrahim Rugova, whose LDK party won almost 46 percent of the vote, will become President while the Prime Minister responsibility will go to Bajram Rexhipi, of the second largest PDK, not to the party's leader, former KLA chief Hashim Thaci. The long-running crisis was regarded by Kosovo Albanians and internationals alike as a disaster. It raised serious questions about the ability of Kosovo's current crop of politicians to govern the province effectively in a democratic fashion. The crisis also highlighted a number of dilemmas facing the international community, which now has to preside over the transfer of self-governing authority to the people of Kosovo without having any strategy for Kosovo's future. The November elections to the Kosovo Assembly, conducted by the OSCE as were the October 2000 local elections, were generally considered to have been well-run and an accurate reflection of the electoral will of the people of Kosovo. Serbs participated in the voting, for the first time since the 1999 war, but Albanian participation, approximately 67 percent according to OSCE data, was down somewhat from the municipal elections in October 2000. Rugova's LDK with 46 seats, the PDK with 26, and former KLA chieftain Ramush Haradinaj's AAK with 8 seats shared almost all of the Albanian vote. The Serb Povratak coalition won 22 seats and ten are held by parties representing Kosovo's other ethnic minorities. After the elections the newly chosen assembly met three times, but with almost all of the non-LDK deputies refusing to participate, Rugova failed to achieve the necessary 60 votes in the 120 member body to attain his cherished goal of becoming Kosovo's first democratically elected and internationally acknowledged president. The crisis had almost nothing to do with policy. It stemmed, rather, from a deep-seated animosity between Rugova and Thaci as well as reluctance within the LDK leadership to give up the power and patronage associated with the post of Prime Minister. On the surface, at least, there is little discernable policy difference between the two men or the two parties—both want Kosovo to be independent, as do all Kosovo Albanians, and both say that their immediate priority is to form Kosovo's new institutions of democratic self-government and to begin a process of privatization intended to get Kosovo's former socially-owned economy moving again. Rugova and Thaci, however, have deep-rooted personal and political differences which go back to the 1999 Rambouillet conference, where Thaci was the beneficiary of a coup which deposed Rugova from his previously accustomed leadership position on the Albanian team, and to the era immediately after the 1999 conflict, when the Thaci led a KLA-dominated "Provisional Government" which used the prestige—and arms—won in the conflict with
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Page 23: 23 About Louie Sell A retired Forei

KOSOVO: THE ROAD AHEAD

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